Happy Birthday Charles Darwin.

[Danny C]

Nobody knows what came before the Big Bang. Nobody knows if the concept "before" can even be said to apply here, because nobody knows whether time existed before the Big Bang. Nobody knows how or why any of this happened. But this lack of knowledge doesn't mean you automatically use Jehovah or Allah or Thor to explain it all away.

You're right about chaos, but things are getting more chaotic. It's just our bit of the galaxy seems a little more ordered. Rest assured, there's plenty enough chaos elsewhere to make us an exception to the rule.

[Your Funny Uncle]

One thing I should say is evolution in of itself does not disprove god per se. It's impossible to disprove something for which there is no verifiable evidence. What it does disprove is the creation myth as told in the bible, and indeed every creation myth told in the holy books of all the many faiths around the world.

If you want to believe that some supreme being helped to shape the formation the most basic building blocks of life, or even tweaked the mutations as they occurred to reach what we have today, then I can't really stop you.

What I cannot agree with is the teaching of any form of creationism in schools. anything like "god thought of a cat and made it appear and now we have cats" is demonstrably wrong and should be kept away from science classes..

This is the first in a series of youtube vids I found that explain what I mean. You may find them interesting.

[Corina]

us humans and creatures are trapped in nature. as such we are trapped in the concept of needing and having a beggining and an end.

we have no idea what a God is. no concept at all. its possible anything worthy of being called a deity is outside this. we take for granted that a moose cant understand the concept of, say ,a computer. we do this because we know the moose just doesnt have the brain capable to allow it. why is it so surprising we arent unlike the moose in the larger picture of the universe when the object in question isnt a computer, its equivelent for us is a God?

the idea that the concept of reproductive organs meant for each other compiled themselves from an mindless explosion of energy, is the equivelent of all the parts of a car being in a park area and a whirlwind hits and it compiles itself correctly.

I have no problem with the theory of evolution. but the idea a detonation of energy compiles into order millions of species of animals,planets,suns,universes,plants that have a purposeful act of reproductive organs meant for each other,is impossible to believe because it flies in the face of science's idea things make sense.

All this comment of yours Glenn is very close to what I think on the matter. Evolution is quite obvious fact to me, but behind it must be something much too mysterious and complicated to be ever completely understood by us, the humans.

[Corina]

What I cannot agree with is the teaching of any form of creationism in schools. anything like "god thought of a cat and made it appear and now we have cats" is demonstrably wrong and should be kept away from science classes...

YFU, we finally agree about something!

[Fugitive1979]

What I cannot agree with is the teaching of any form of creationism in schools. anything like "god thought of a cat and made it appear and now we have cats" is demonstrably wrong and should be kept away from science classes...

This example of a nonsense-lesson reminds me of a lesson I had when I was in Primary 2 (1985/86). We were taught, correctly, that inventions were named after the people who invented them. However, they gave the impression that ALL inventions were named after the person who invented them. Sensing an error, I asked if that meant that a Mr. Washing Machine had invented the washing machine. The teacher's response in the affirmative was rather alarming, and because of this, I then became sceptical about certain things we were being taught.

Religious Education then became the main target of my scepticism, and I was always trying to find logical, tangible explanations for what we were being led to believe. I never believed that God (or whoever He is to you) could have just clicked his fingers and made things appear. Soon after, I heard of Charles Darwin and that he had a theory called Evolution. This seemed much more plausible to me than the world and everything on it being created in 6 days flat.

By the age of about 10, I had started to take an interest in the planet's history, and I learned about fossils. I also learned that the Human species had only been around for a couple of million years and that there were creatures who had been scientifically proven to have been around long before us. Kind of makes a mockery of the creation theory, considering we were supposed to be first (Adam & Eve). Or did He make the dinosaurs on the previous day?

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are parts of the Bible which can teach good lessons to everybody. But, in my opinion, if the book of Genesis was published on its' own, then it would the biggest-selling book of fiction the world has ever read.

[glennjridge]

I dont know why fellow christians are so intent to get creationism taught in schools anyways. evolution doesnt comment on intelligent design in as much it comments on the mechanics of a process thats set in motion for species. it doesnt really comment on what created the universes,planets,creatures,and all life.

the important message of that video that most christians should unerstand is when it correctly says evoultion doesnt=atheism.
as there are alot of religious who are still under the assumption it is.

[Your Funny Uncle]

YFU, we finally agree about something!

Hehe good. I don't have a problem with people believing in god even though it makes no sense to me. I can attempt to explain my own point of view but in the end it's your choice what you believe.

What can't abide with is when people ignore all the evidence based on nothing more than more than what it says in their holy books. I especially despise creationists' invention of pseudo-scientific theories in an attempt pass them off as true science, with the intention of causing confusion amongst the less well educated.

I also have problems with many of the things that have historically been and continue to be done in the name of god/the gods or "the one true faith" but that has less to do with science and more to do with politics...

[Corina]

...the less well educated

What a good mass of manoeuvre for various types of manipulation, indoctrination and advertising campaigns...! The herd spirit is just bliss for some.

[Zog]

I was surprised that his grave in Westminister Abbey, I saw his grave in London.
He wantet to proove that we are from monkeyes...

Nonsense! If you are going to argue against Darwin, at least know what you are arguing against.

No one said that we "are from monkeys", except fundamentalist Christians who, it seems, have never taken the time to understand the basics of Evolution.

Darwin said that we share a common ancestor. That is not the same thing at all. Not remotely.


(Incidentally, this line of fallacious reasoning is essentially a variation on what is known in philosophy as "The Straw Man Argument". The basic idea is, to misrepresent a view (or views) of your opponent... and then argue against the misrepresented view. It can be effective if the misrepresented view can be easily disproved.)


-Zog

[Your Funny Uncle]

Exactly right, Zog. We are not FROM any species that now exists. We share common ancestors with them, as Darwin predicted.

The other thing to mention is that biologically speaking we still ARE apes. We are not FROM apes. We are part of the same family as monkees, chimps, gorillas et al, in the same way as dogs are in the same family as wolves, coyotes and foxes.

Everything Darwin surmised has been backed up by both the fossil record and DNA, to such an extent that there isn't really an argument anymore. As I said before, we are more closely related to chimps than horses are to donkeys!

Here's another video in the same series as i posted earlier. Check it out, especially from 6:30 onwards.

[No Muscle Mary]

I'll let Ricky Gervais speak for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixAOfyAXoY

[alig]

If idiots could fly, this place would be an airport.

Drico.

if hubris, arrogance and ignorance could hurt, you'd have od'ed on morphine long time ago.

[alig]

I was surprised that his grave in Westminister Abbey, I saw his grave in London.
He wantet to proove that we are from monkeyes...

Nonsense! If you are going to argue against Darwin, at least know what you are arguing against.

No one said that we "are from monkeys", except fundamentalist Christians who, it seems, have never taken the time to understand the basics of Evolution.

Darwin said that we share a common ancestor. That is not the same thing at all. Not remotely.


(Incidentally, this line of fallacious reasoning is essentially a variation on what is known in philosophy as "The Straw Man Argument". The basic idea is, to misrepresent a view (or views) of your opponent... and then argue against the misrepresented view. It can be effective if the misrepresented view can be easily disproved.)


-Zog

OF COURSE you claim that we stem from apes! You claim that humans branched off from apes. Evolutionists just love to keep changing their tack and arguments in order to obfuscate the fact that they can't prove anything. You keep using straw men arguments about creationists. And yes, I am a fundamentalist Christian and God is the foundation of my life. You though believe that you got all sussed out and anybody who dares disagree with you is ignorant. We humans can't even cure a bunged up nose and yet you think that you know it all. Fact is that evolution has never been proven. No matter how many times you cross a fruit fly, it remains a fruit fly. Has anybody ever witnessed millions of years of evolution in progress? Have you? So please be a bit more modest in the light of eternity.

www.creationwiki.org

[No Muscle Mary]

Alig, the only person here calling anyone ignorant is you.

And why does the onus lie with evolutionists to prove evolution. Why don't you prove that the earth was made by God? Did you witness this happening?

[Your Funny Uncle]

If god is a designer he should be sacked. He designed a lower jaw in which there isn't enough room for all the teeth, and eye with a blind spot (despite designing perfectly good eyes without blind spots in octupi and squids!) Also why did he design a body best equipped for a prehistoric hunter-gatherer lifestyle instead of modern civilisation? It just doesn't add up!

And of course evolutionary theory hasn't been proved. That's not the way science works! It is however the best explaination that we have come up with and has been contiually IMproved and refined, with all the evidence from several different fields of study continually backing it up.

What has been DISproved is the creation story as told in the bible. It is demonstrably wrong and all the picking at the edges of evolutionary theory that creationists do will never change that. All the arrogance here stems from them in believeing that a 2000 year old book (written, let's face it, by men even if they claimed to be passing on god's word) designed as a moral compass to bronze-age humanity is literally true despite all the evidence generated by the last few hundred years of scientific endeavour. Even the majority of the world's Christians accept this.

As to evolution in action, what about MRSA for example? That is modern day proof of bacteria EVOLVING a resistance to antibiotics. Just because evolution in larger organisms takes place over a far longer timescale than any human can see is no reason to dismiss it. It's precisely the power of the theory. It explains in a naturalistic way which is underpinned by all the evidence how the diversity of life that we see today came to be.

If there were a means of scientifically disproving evolution, then surely any true scientist would jump on it. The most famous scientists (Newton, Einstein and Darwin himself, for example) are those whose ideas lead to a huge change in scientific thinking, overturning old theories to replace them with new better ones. This has yet to happen to evolutionary theory despite 150 years of scientific research.

If and when such a new theory does arrive, I'm willing to bet that it will not back up stories of an earth that is a few thousand years old on which all life was suddenly wiped out by a cataclysmic flood before restarting from a large boat.